Faster than refueling

Charges in seconds: Breakthrough with sodium battery

E-cars cannot yet keep up with very short refueling stops, but this is likely to change in the foreseeable future.(Bild: APA/dpa/Christophe Gateau)

According to Korean researchers, they have achieved a "breakthrough" in charging sodium batteries. They were able to charge and discharge them in just a few seconds. This could massively accelerate the mobility revolution.

Sodium batteries have long been said to have immense advantages over the lithium-ion batteries most commonly used to date. Not only are they considered to be significantly cheaper, they are also more sustainable as they can be produced almost entirely without rare earths.

In addition, they are less susceptible to thermal instability and could have a longer service life, which improves the performance and reliability of electric vehicles.

Charging significantly faster than "normal" refueling
The battery developed by scientists at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) could once again accelerate the transition to electromobility. As they describe in the journal "Energy Storage Materials", they can fully charge and discharge their energy storage system in just a few seconds - far faster than a normal refueling process with fossil fuels.

This is made possible by materials that are normally used for so-called supercapacitors. These are electricity storage devices with an enormously high power density - they are also known for their enormous charging speeds, but can only store a very small amount of energy.

Hybrid of rechargeable battery and supercapacitor
The researchers have now developed a kind of hybrid of rechargeable battery and supercapacitor in order to utilize the advantages of both technologies - and achieved record values for energy and power density. In addition to the immense charging speed, the battery built in the laboratory also had a greater range than previously used energy storage systems. Thanks to the high power density, it could also be used to operate more powerful electric motors.

First sodiumbatteries already installed
The big question now is how quickly the battery can be put to practical use. Although the first sodium batteries are already being installed in electric vehicles in China, they still have to make do with a short range of around 250 kilometers.

In any case, the newly developed battery should clearly surpass this, as with 247 watt hours it has significantly more storage capacity than the market-ready model (150 watt hours).